Wynne vows to keep Drive Clean test program while PCs keen to scrap it

TORONTO — Premier Kathleen Wynne says if the Liberals win the June 12 election they will keep the Drive Clean vehicle emissions test program, separating her party from the NDP and Progressive Conservatives — both of which are willing to cut it.

Speaking at a campaign event Friday in Toronto, the Liberal premier said her party would do whatever it could “to make sure the air is clean.” But the program has come under fire as nothing more than a tax grab.

The Progressive Conservatives have said they would kill programs that “don’t offer good value,” such as Drive Clean, which critics say has outlived its usefulness.

“I think you’ll be amazed at how much government you’re never going to miss (and) top of my list: Drive Clean,” Tim Hudak said Friday.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has said she is open to looking at whether the program is delivering environmental benefits and if it’s not, she’s “not aversed to seeing it deep-sixed.”

The Liberal government recently lowered the price from $35 to $30 for the emissions tests drivers pay for every two years for light-duty vehicles at least seven years old.

Drive Clean is supposed to be a revenue-neutral program to get cars that spew pollution off the road, but it started turning a profit.

The government collected $30 million in fees in 2011-12, but spent only $19 million to deliver the program. It had projected a surplus of $11 million by the end of that fiscal year.

Ontario’s former auditor general warned in 2012 that could land the province in legal hot water, because it’s a user fee, not a tax. He cited a Supreme Court decision that in effect warned a user fee cannot exceed the cost to provide the service.

Wynne is characterizing the choice in this election as one between her party and the Progressive Conservatives, criticizing their plan to cut 100,000 public sector jobs.

“There is a very stark choice that is confronting people right now in Ontario,” Wynne said.

“On June 12 people will be choosing between our party, that has put forward a plan that is very comprehensive … and a plan that the Conservatives are putting forward that really starts with cutting and tearing down much of what has been built.”

The NDP, she said, has put forward “a list of kind of disconnected ideas,” many of them coming from the Liberal platform.

But on Friday, speaking in a long-held Liberal riding in Ottawa, Horwath framed the race differently — ruling out Hudak as a contender and taking strides to separate her party from the Liberals, saying that a vote for the Liberals would amount to rewarding their “bad behaviour.”

The NDP leader dismissed concerns of vote splitting among left-leaning voters eager to keep the PCs out of power, saying she doesn’t see Hudak’s plan — which includes cutting 100,000 public sector jobs — gaining enough traction to warrant strategic voting come June 12.

Hudak used a Friday speech to a business audience in London, Ont., to rail at what he called “corporate welfare.”

Speaking to the city’s chamber of commerce, Hudak called grants and subsidies to big business “economically disastrous and morally wrong.”

He says no credible economic literature shows a province or country can subsidize its way to prosperity.
Hudak criticized the Liberal government for caving in to “ransom” from Chrysler and wasting money on Kellogg’s.

The Tory leader says the best way to spur economic growth and create jobs is by lowering corporate taxes.

His pledge, if elected, is to make Ontario the lowest corporate tax jurisdiction in North America.